This will take you to the New Players
Guide. Click here to find
out how to stay alive when you fist log on.

The Rules

These are the official rules for the game. As this is a web based game
it's fairly hard to enforce these rules.

You are not allowed to have multiple accounts. In other words, if
you have more than one player in the game you are breaking the rules. As
above, if you need two accounts to test a theory, host your own game. If
you are caught with multiple accounts you can voluntarily self destruct
all but one and keep playing that one or lose them all. Remember, the
admin can always remove your player from the game.

No inheritance exploits. I have to define this one first. A certain
player (ok, me) got caught doing this and argued that it wasn't really
cheating. Pretty much everyone on the forums agreed that he was full of
crap and I do too. The deal is this. When you're new you get 200 turns.
You can trade trade trade, leave the money somewhere safe and self
destruct. Then sign on again with a new account and pick up the money.
Keep doing this and you get a really high score right off the bat. The
trick is that everyone knows you're doing this because your score is way
too high for the low number of turns you have. There are measures being
taken in the code to prevent this trick from being possible.

Please, no cursing in the beacons or the forums.

If you find a bug it is against the rules to exploit it. You must
report it right away to the webmaster and preferably to the forums as
well.

More Info

You are going to have more questions. I say this with a fair amount of
certainty. There are two really good sources of answers I know of other
than this FAQ. First, you can always send a message to one of the top 10
players in the game. They should know the answer, but they may not bother
to reply. The second source is the official forum. This link is to
the forum on TheGeek.org. The creator of the the game,
Ron Harwood, runs TheGeek.org.

Strategies:

These are some generic strategies to help you get started. These aren't
set in stone, and are very general. They should give you an idea of what
works and what doesn't though. There are of course many more strategies,
but these are the ones I thought up at 2 in the morning. :)

Special Note: For all of these strategies I am assuming that you have
already survived your first couple of days in the game. If you are still a
newbie, read the New Player
Guide first.

The Trader

The Trader primarily spends his time trading. The best thing to do is
find a goods port and an ore port in adjacent sectors. Trade back and
forth until either you can afford a hull upgrade or the port's prices are
no longer very good. Keep doing this. When you're engines are large enough
to realspace (this varies on the galaxy size in each game, usually
anywhere from 14 to 18) start doing trade routes between goods and ore
ports. They don't have to be adjacent at this point. Be sure to buy a fuel
scoop if you're going to realspace trade (trade route).

Be sure to have the maximum amount of EWDs and an escape pod at all
times to ensure survival. You don't have to upgrade any techs except for
hull, energy, and engines. Everything else is good for combat or
colonizing. Your military techs can be zero as the EWDs are your primary
means of survival.

PROS: Quick rise in score. Good to play catch up if you enter
the game late. CONS: Lack of planetary empire means that you'll
lose out in the long run. I find that the Trader is only effective up to
about a hull level of 18 or so. That's just my gut reaction. It might be
wrong. It's probably a lower tech level in reality.

The Builder

The Builder is mainly concerned in building a planetary empire. As
such, he should build his hull to a level 15-16. Then start colonizing a
planet. Colonize planets to about 25-50 million before moving on to the
next planet. The reason for not fully colonizing a planet is that you want
the colonists to procreate for as long as possible. They stop when there
are 100 million people on a planet. I guess sex is boring at that point.
Didn't think that was possible. My bad. :)

Here's the deal on upgrading. When you hit a 15-16 hull level, upgrade
everything to within 4 of your hull. Actually, forget about sensors.
Builders don't need sensors. They don't need amour either for that
matter. Always have full EWDs and an escape pod. Every time you upgrade
your hull, upgrade the other techs. Quit upgrading engines when you can
realspace anywhere in 1 turn. Upgrade as soon as you can.

So far as colonizing is concerned, realspace to a special port. Pick up
a full load of colonists, fighters, and torps. Realspace to your new
planet. Drop off colonists, fighters, torps, and the energy you made from
realspacing. On each new planet, set the energy production to 5% and all
other productions to zero. You'll need the energy to power planetary
shields and beams.

Colonize constantly. Use the money made by your planets to buy the
stuff to supply your planets. You don't really need to trade much in this
strategy.

PROS: You make lots of cash in the long run. CONS:
Kind of slow to start. Conquerors can sometimes take your planets.

The Banker

The Banker builds one planet to full
capacity. Upgrade as though you were a builder. Be sure that the planet is
completely well defended. Keep adding fighters. If you think that the
planet has a ridiculously high number of fighters, then it's probably the
right number. I'd recommend spending something like 5-10% of your turns
adding more fighters and torps to the planet.

Ok, here's the way the Banker makes his living. Put all your money on
the planet and then land on the planet. It should be well defended enough
to survive any attacks. Wait 600 turns, during which the money will earn
interest. Play the 600 turns as though you were a Trader. At the end, put
the new money on the planet and wait another 600 turns before you play
again. The important thing is to let the money sit around and accrue
interest for as long as possible.

This strategy works fairly well if you combine it with a Builder, i.e..
Build a bunch of planets, but Bank on one of them. Harder to defend your
empire this way.

PROS: You can make a metric buttload of cash if you're patient.
CONS: You can only play every couple of days and you don't have
many planets to produce for you.

The Conqueror

The premise here is that you build up your military techs (shields,
armor, computers, torps, and to a lesser degree sensors) and use them to
take other people's planets. You then use the money acquired from these
new planets to upgrade even further. You end up with lots of ill gotten
colonists and planets this way. They will make money for you and you will
gain an empire similar to that a Builder might create.

Be sure to stock every new planet acquired with plenty of fighters and
torps to be sure that the former owner won't come and try to take the
planet back. Trust me, that sucks.

PROS: You can get a whole lot of colonists using a small number
of turns. CONS: Everyone will hate you and it's sometimes hard
to defend new "acquisitions".

The Idiot

This is more a list of what not to do. I've seen people do things that
boggle the mind, but the truth is that they just don't know any better.
Here's a listing. Don't...

...scan over and over and over. It is a waste of turns. Don't scan
ships or planets unless you actively plan on attacking them. For one,
it's a waste of turns. Also, it pisses people off to be scanned. You
will be marked if you scan someone more than once.

...waste your time trading energy or organics. Ore and goods will
give you the greatest returns.

...realspace move unless you can get somewhere in 1 or 2 turns. I've
seen people use 50-100 turns to move from where they are to sol. You
could probably move from sector to sector and find a special port using
less turns. Plus you might find other planets or trading ports along the
way.

Before you attack a planet check to see if it is set to sell. If it
is, buy all the energy. The planet's beams and shields will be made
useless.

If you need to go to a special port and don't particularly care
where you go afterwards, shop at good old sector 0. After you're done
wait around and let the update that runs every 6 minutes place you in a
random sector. You effectively get a free move. Of course, this only
works if you're hull is over the allowed federation space limit. I call
this the "sol bump".

Whenever you buy an EWD, buy a warp editor to go along with it. That
way, if you get attacked you can easily create a link back to wherever
you were before. If being there is important that is.

Planetary Production
Values

Planets can produce all sorts of things. Here goes. By the way, all of
the commodity production rates assume you're producing at 100% capacity.
If you're putting 50% towards a commodity, for example, it would take
twice as many colonists to make the same number of said items.

Colonists reproduce at the rate of 1.0005 * your current population
each turn. So, it takes 2000 colonists to have one baby each turn. Man,
these guys need some more mood music I guess.

Money left on the planet will increase at the rate of 1.0005 *
current money on planet each turn. In other words, you get .05% interest
on your cash every turn. This works out pretty well if you have lots of
money.

It takes 20,000 colonists to make 1 fighter each turn. The number of
fighters produced is as follows: number of colonists * .005 * .01

It takes 20,000 colonists to make 1 torpedo each turn. The number of
torps produced is as follows: number of colonists * .005 * .01

It takes 800 colonists to make 1 unit of ore each turn. The number
of ore units produced is as follows: number of colonists * .005 * .25

It takes 400 colonists to make 1 unit of organics each turn. The
number of organics units produced is as follows: number of colonists *
.005 * .50

It takes 800 colonists to make 1 unit of goods each turn. The number
of goods units produced is as follows: number of colonists * .005 * .25

It takes 2000 colonists to make 1 unit of energy each turn. The
number of energy units produced is as follows: number of colonists *
.005 * .1

It takes 67 colonists to make 1 credit each turn. The number of
credits produced is as follows: number of colonists * .005 * 3.0

Hull Sizes by Tech
Level

This list will show you how many items you can store in your holds.
This list also represents armor, shields, beams, torps, and fighter
capacity. I show up to tech level 24 That's the highest I've ever gotten
to. The formula for figuring out the capacity of your holds or other tech
levels you
will have is 100*(1.5^(the tech level in question)). Round off that number
and you have your answer.

100

150

225

338

506

759

1,138

1,709

2,563

3,844

5,767

8,650

12,975

19,462

29,193

43,789

65,684

98,526

147,789

221,684

332,526

498,789

748,182

1,122,274

1,683,411

Upgrade Costs by Tech
Level

This is a listing of how much it costs to upgrade to a certain tech level.
For example, upgrading from 0 to 1 costs 1,000 credits.

1,000

2,000

4,000

8,000

16,000

32,000

64,000

128,000

256,000

512,000

1,024,000

2,048,000

4,096,000

8,192,000

16,384,000

32,768,000

65,536,000

131,072,000

262,144,000

524,288,000

1,048,576,000

2,097,152,000

4,194,304,000

8,388,608,000

16,777,216,000

The Particulars of Combat

Combat is tricky. I'm going to lay it out one step at a time. First
we'll do ship to ship combat, and then we'll do ship to planet combat.
This is basically an English representation of the code. Now, those of you
who complain about not being able to read the PHP code can quiet down.

One very important thing that I want to stress is this. In a fight, you
use 100% of your fighters. You only use 2% of your torps. This is because
the torpedo launchers mounted on your ship can only launch a salvo equal
to 2% of the maximum torps you can carry. Make sense? I hope so.

VERY IMPORTANT ADDITION TO VERSION 0.1.14 COMBAT:Combat now
requires energy for beams and shields. If you have 20k energy on your ship
and your beams can support 25k beams and your shields are at 25k shields,
you'll actually get 20k beams and 0 shields. The reason is that beams use
energy before shields do. In this example, you'd have to have 50k energy
on hand for beams and shields to both be at max power.

Ship to Ship Combat

Ship to ship combat happens in a very straightforward manner. Here we
go. I'll be using the following method to determine who is the attacker
and who is the defender. a_shields is attacker shields. d_shields is
defender shields. No here we go.

First, a_engines and d_engines are compared. A chance to attack is
determined by this formula: success=(10-d_engines+a_engines)*5. This
number is then compared to a random number between 1 and 100. If the
random number is higher than the success number, the attack goes on.
Otherwise you get a message saying "Target out maneuvered
you!".

Here's an example. If your engines are 13 and his engines
are 16, then we calculate the success rate as (10-16+13)*5. The result
is 35. Hence, you have a 65% chance (35% chance to fail) to
succeed.

Second, a_sensors and d_cloak are compared. A chance to attack is
determined by this formula: success=(10-d_cloak+a_sensors)*5. This
number is then compared to a random number between 1 and 100. If the
random number is lower than the success number, the attack goes on.
Otherwise you get a message saying "Unable to get a lock on
target!".

Here's an example. If your sensors are 7 and his cloak
is 3, then we calculate the success rate as (10-3+7)*5. This result is
70. This means you have a straight 70% chance of success.

I know
this looks the same as the above engines check, but here you get the
success percent right away. There you have to subtract from 100. Looks
like two different people wrote this code. Incidentally, there's always
at least a 5% success or 5% failure chance. Nothing is certain.

Okay, now combat is a go. If the defender has an Emergency Warp
Device, it is used and the defender is sent to a random sector between 1
and the max sector number, which is 5000 in this game. Combat, of
course, would end. If the defender has no Emergency Warp Devices, combat
is continued.

First, beams are exchanged against fighters. The a_beams will
destroy up to half of the d_fighters and vice versa.

For example,
you have 20,000 beams and he has 14,000 fighters. Your beams will take
out 7,000 fighters (half) and leave you with 13,000 beams left over. If
you had 20,000 beams and he had 47,000 fighters, you would take out
20,000 fighters. That would leave you with 0 beams and leave him with
27,000 fighters.

This step only happens if either player has any beams left. Assume
we have beams left. The a_beams will go against d_shields. If the beams
are higher, they will negate all of the shields and there will still be
some beams left over. The same thing goes for the defender's beams
against your shields.

For example, you have 7,000 beams left over
from the previous step. Your opponent has 20,000 shields. Your beams
would take away 7,000 shield points and your beams would be done. If he
had had only 6,000 shields, your beams would have taken away all shields
and left you with 1,000 beams left over.

This step also only happens if there are beams left over from the
previous two steps. In this step, a_beams are matched up against
d_armor. If your beams are greater than his armor, then he is going to
die. If your beams aren't high enough, you just take away that many
points of armor.

For example, you have 3,000 beams left over and
the opponent has 40,000 armor. You'll take away 3,000, leaving him with
37,000 armor. If he had 3,000 armor or less, he would die in the
conflict. Death equates to an armor rating of 0 or less.

Now we have an exchange of torpedoes. In this version of the game
(blacknova.net 3/6/01) torps have a damage rating of 10. This is
something that can be changed in the config file, so it might not always
be the same. First off, torp damage is calculated by multiplying the
number of torps you have by the torp damage rate. So, if you had 400
torps, your torp damage would be 4,000 (400*10).

If the defender
has any fighters left, the torp damage will take out up to half of them.
It's basically the same as with the beams. So, if your torp damage is
4,000 and d_fighters is 5,000, you will take out 2,500 fighters. That'll
leave you with 1,500 worth of torp damage to work with. If he had had
10,000 fighters, you would have taken out a full 4,000 of them. You
wouldn't have any torp damage left though.

If you have any torp damage left, it is applied to the defender's
armor. So, if you had 4,000 torp damage left, you'd take away 4,000
armor.

Now, fighters attack. Your original fighters total is subtracted from
his fighter total, and his original total is deleted from yours. This
might not seem immediately intuitive, but it is. I'll give some
examples.

You have 40,000 and he has 36,000. You'll end up with
4,000 left over and he'll end up with 0.You have 20,000 and he has
20,000. You'll both end up with 0.You have 15,000 and he has 27,000.
You'll end up with 0 and he'll end up with 12,000.

If there are any fighters left, they are applied to the defender's
armor. So, if you have 34,000 fighters left, you can do 34,000 damage to
d_armor. If the defender doesn't have enough armor left, too
bad.

The last step is to test whether or not either player is dead. If
either player has armor of 0 or less, they are dead. If you die, life
sucks. You learned a hard lesson. If your opponent dies and you live,
you get some money based on salvaging his ship. If you want to know how
much, look in the code. I'm tired.

Ship to Planet Combat

This works almost exactly the same as above. If the defender's ship is
not on the planet, then the planet is considered defeated if its shields
and fighters are reduced to 0. The planet has no armor, so skip the part
where you attack the opponent's armor.

If the planet's owner is on the planet, then things are somewhat more
complicated. You should understand how combat works from the above
listing, so I'll just list the order in which things happen.

Your beams can take out up to half of the planet's fighters.

Planet beams take out up to half of your fighters.

Owner beams take out up to half of your fighters.

Player beams go against planet shields.

Planet beams go against your shields.

Owner beams go against your shields.

Your beams go against owner armor.

Planet beams go against your armor.

Owner beams go against your armor.

Your torp damage takes out planet fighters.

Your torp damage takes out up to half of the owner's fighter.

Planet torps take out up to half of your fighters.

Owner torps take out up to half of your fighters.

Your torp damage goes against owner's armor.

Planet torp damage goes against your armor.

Owner torp damage goes against your armor.

Your fighters go against planet fighters.

Your fighters go against owner fighters.

Your fighters go against planet shields.

Your fighters go against owner armor.

Planet fighters go against your armor.

Owner fighters go against your armor.

If your armor is 0 or less, you die. Bozo.

If owner armor is 0 or less, he dies. Good job.

If you're alive, he's dead, and the planet has no fighters or
shields, you win and get the planet. Well played.

See, I told you it was easy.

How... or How Not to
Colonize a Planet

This is something I wrote in the forums... thought it belonged here.
Standard cut 'n' paste action. Here goes:

Also, I've seen planets that have 100 million colonists on them
already. I'm gonna give a short lesson right now on why you should NEVER
colonize a planet to 100 million people.

First, I pose a question. How many extra, and conveniently free,
colonists does a maxed out planet make per turn. The answer is zero.

Now, how many new colonists could be produced by 100 million peeps if
they were allowed to reproduce. The answer is 50k peeps. At 5 creds per
peep, that's a value of 250k per turn for free. You don't even have to
transport them from a special. They take care of that on their own.

Now imagine that you don't have 100 million peeps on one planet, but 50
million each on two planets. Now, each planet will make 25k peeps per turn
and you'll get your 250k credits worth between the two planets.

Those two planets will take exactly 1387 turns to reproduce until they
are full. You will gain free colonists, which means free money, on every
one of those turns. If you had just the one planet, you'd get nothing for
free.

Now imagine that you had spread those colonists over four planets
instead of two. It would take each of those four planets 2774 turns to go
from 25 million peeps to 100 million peeps. You'd be getting free people
for that many turns. Ultimately you'll get an additional 300 million
people for free. At 5 creds per person that's 1.5 billion credits for
free. It's spread over 2774 turns, but it's still a damn lot of credits
for free.

I assume you see where I'm going with this. Residual income is a gold
mine. By spreading the same number of colonists over a greater number of
planets you are increasing the total future amount of residual income. The
only downside is that you have more planets to defend. The upside is that
even if you lose one, you have other equally large planets to rely on for
income.

Hence, the moral of this story is not to colonize to 100 million. It's
dumb. I am going to suggest a maximum colonizing limit of 15-25 million
colonists. That gives you a solid planet, but also gives you plenty of
time for the planets to grow. That's just a suggestion. Use your own
judgment.

Questions and Answers:

When people send me questions, I'll answer them here. I'll reprint the
question and answer it to the best of my ability.